I only noticed this recently after watching someone on youtube playing this with a joystick.

If you are moving with your mouse faster than what the max. turning speed speed is, your ship will actually steer slower then normally. I experimented with this, and it is a rather small facter, but it is the most noticeable when changing turning directions quickly, e.g. wiggling left and right with your mouse slower over small distance VS faster over longer distance.

When you move the mouse just slightly below the max. turning speed, that's when you get the fastest turning speed with your ship using a mouse.

I don't want to say you are wrong but I'm pretty sure this can't happen from how it's coded. Are you certain you are not imagining it? The speed cap on the mouse tends to feel awkward when you move it quickly, but that's the nature of it...

MadMax1998 wrote:I don't want to say you are wrong but I'm pretty sure this can't happen from how it's coded. Are you certain you are not imagining it? The speed cap on the mouse tends to feel awkward when you move it quickly, but that's the nature of it...

Tried it again this time also with ridiculous mouse speed settings (7 and 2 on both axis).

Test setup:
- Vertigo, invulnerability room. Stood in front of the gate leading into the lava corridor to cerberus and shield.
- The gate has 2 red lights. Tried shooting them interchangeably with lasers as fast as I could.
- Tried shooting 1 of them by doing a 360° to the left and to the right.
- Tried shooting center of the gate, then turning around (180°) and shooting the Atlas rocket spawn.

Results:
- Snapping mouse left and right slower: I actually had to hold down the fire button to keep firing at both targets on time.
- Snapping mouse left and right faster: when holding down the fire button the shots were often out of sync, hitting the center of the gate before the reticle could reach the other light.
- 360° and 180° turn tests showed no measurable difference.

Here's the thing: You were right, it's not actually mouse acceleration, BUT there's something weird going on when you try to quickly change directions. It feels like when you try to snap the mouse at someone too quickly, when you are ALREADY steering in the opposite direction, it tries to stop the steering first. However, it doesn't prevent steering to the opposite direction. Instead, it sort of mixes them and caps both movements. You can tell this by seeing the instant bank (roll) to the other side, when you change the direction. The steering itself linearly transitions from one end to the other, through 0 velocity.

However, when you snap the mouse slower, or even wait a moment for the steering to settle first before changing direction, the steering to the opposite direction starts out a lot faster. It linearly decelerates back to zero, but after that it starts the steering to the opposite direction a lot faster! Therefor, for small but faster aim corrections moving the mouse slower is actually a lot better.

Again, it's a rather small difference, but it's there. You might as well just say "Our game is meant to be played with a joystick" and leave it at that.

No, our game is meant to be played with any device you're comfortable with. I play mouse exclusively too.

I think what it boils down to is the way the game code handles opposite movement: you are correct, when you switch direction as you rotate in one direction already, the code will "average out" both the existing rotation (as it decelerates from lack of input) and the new rotation (as it accelerates from new input given). This usually results in a sensation of stopping the current rotation dead-on instead of seeing it decelerate, as it would if you just let go of the mouse. Once the dead stop has happened, the game then builds up velocity into the new direction as the acceleration curve creeps to the top. If you give it slower/less input, the deceleration from the first rotation direction will not happen immediately, and the speedup to the new rotation will also be slower.

I don't see how this is unusual behaviour though. If you flicked a joystick left/right madly, it would be the same thing -- even more so if that stick had a high sensitivity and would thus register full input even when not being smashed to full lock. It's just how the game handles the ship's reaction to input. I never felt that Descent did this differently... and I religiously compared my flight feel to Descent's as I wrote the code.

MadMax1998 wrote:I think what it boils down to is the way the game code handles opposite movement: you are correct, when you switch direction as you rotate in one direction already, the code will "average out" both the existing rotation (as it decelerates from lack of input) and the new rotation (as it accelerates from new input given). This usually results in a sensation of stopping the current rotation dead-on instead of seeing it decelerate, as it would if you just let go of the mouse. Once the dead stop has happened, the game then builds up velocity into the new direction as the acceleration curve creeps to the top. If you give it slower/less input, the deceleration from the first rotation direction will not happen immediately, and the speedup to the new rotation will also be slower.

I believe you misunderstood. The exact opposite happens right now. Giving slower/less input will result in faster acceleration to the new rotation in the opposite direction.

What would be cool is a server setting that brings the max sensitivity down. Currently the max mouse sensitivity feels beautiful for the mouse but it's too hard to have 100% control when aiming on the joystick. Bringing it down on the joystick in the settings alone is not a fix because it places the joystick at a disadvantage. A ship is not supposed to turn that fast, I think. If the lower sensitivity setting could be called 'Classic' match, that would be great.

I believe you misunderstood. The exact opposite happens right now. Giving slower/less input will result in faster acceleration to the new rotation in the opposite direction.

I have tested this the same way you did... tried shooting the lights in Vertigo alternately. This is is what I observed:

- if I use the arrow keys, it takes a certain time to hit both lights alternately
- if I use the mouse and flick it like crazy, it takes the same time as the keys
- if I make "half-speed" movements on the mouse (so not saturating the speed cap), it's a bit quicker

So what you described is correct, however, it's not a bug or an issue. Have you considered that our game simulates inertia on your ship? If you go full speed into one direction, then turning the opposite way first has to slow down the current movement. The quicker you are going in the first direction, the longer it will take the ship to stop and start moving in the other direction. So yes, in this very specific example, slower movements (from the mouse or a joystick or any other analog input) can lead to faster hits left/right because if you don't speed up the ship 100%, then less than 100% of that movement have to be stopped before it turns around.